Published
Quarterly by the Nebraska State Historical Society
Addison E. Sheldon, EditorSubscription $2.00
Per Year
All
sustaining members of the Nebraska State Historical Society receive
Nebraska History without further payment.

Vol.
IV.

January-March, 1921

Number
1

Lend
this issue to your friend. After he has read it ask him how he
likes in. Then secure his membership in the Nebraska State
Historical Society.

Volume XX of our bound and illustrated reports
is in the hands of the printer. The page-proof has been read.
Editor Albert Watkins is completing the index. It is an important
and interesting volume--filled with fascinating "stories" of
Nebraska which you have never seen in print.

A sample recent day's mail to the Historical
Society brought letters asking historical information from points
as far away as New York City, Akron, Ohio, Tacoma, Denver and
Beaumont, Texas, while letters from Nebraska came from points as
separate as Omaha, Benkleman, Pawnee City and Alliance.

The Nebraska State Historical Society issues
three distinct types of publications. First, the bound volumes of
state reports, begun in 1885; Second, special pamphlets- and
volumes on single topics; Third, the quarterly magazine. All three
publications will continue. All current publications, are sent to
sustaining members.

NEBRASKA
STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

2

NEBRASKA
HISTORY

With this number the Historical Society
begins the publication of its quarterly in regular magazine form.
This form has long been planned for its permanent publication. It
is believed the plan will now succeed. The magazine will be
larger--and better--as the months go by. There is interest in its
subject. There is demand for its information. There is needed only
the financial means to pay for expert office help, printing and
illustrations.

"Saunders County in the World War" is a
handsome bound volume of 200 pages which reflects great credit on
the Wahoo Democrat, publisher, and W. W. Chreiman, compiler. It
has hundreds of pictures of scenes and persons showing how
Saunders county sustained her part in the great conflict--at home
and abroad. The story is well told. Volumes such as these will be
cherished and studied through the centuries to come. Each county
in Nebraska needs such a book.

L. T. Brodstone of Superior is a genius.
No one can read a letter he writes, but he prints the most
wonderful, successful, magazine in Nebraska--the Philatelic West.
It is one organ of collectors and hoby riders. It circulates all
over the world. Its advertising columns are a gold mine. It tells
all about the rare coins, stamps, weapons, implements, relics. It
is a great popular lecturer on human history for no one can be a
"bug" collector without becoming a student of history. From the
latest issue we glean that one can now buy World War shrapnel for
$4 each; German helmets, $3.00, French and German shell cases, 85
cents, German gas mask $2.50 and war currency at any price you
please.

From Dale P. Stough, of Grand Island, the
Society acknowledges the gift of two volumes of the History of
Hamilton and Clay counties and two volumes of the history of Dodge
and Washington counties. Mr. Stough is editor of the Clay and
Hamilton volumes and has done a good piece of work condensing a
narrative of important points in State history. There is need of a
good county history for each county in Nebraska. The work ought to
be done by someone familiar with the story, knowing the people,
having training and love for the work and not chiefly concerned in
getting paid biographies and illustrations.

EDITORIAL
NOTES

3

John A. Rea, Tacoma, is now president of the
board of regents of Washington State University. Fifty years ago
he was a newspaper reporter in Lincoln and Omaha. His
recollections of that period are original and vivid, and he is now
engaged in making a picturesque story of them. During the past few
weeks he has kept the Nebraska State Historical Society busy
supplying his demand for original documents.

From Victor Rosewater, Omaha, comes a
pamphlet, "A Curious Chapter in Constitution Changing"--reprint of
an article by him in the Political Science Quarterly. It is a
brief review of the efforts to make the Nebraska Constitution of
1875 amendable. Especially condemned is the device enacted in 1901
for counting straight party ballots for such amendments. Mr.
Rosewater points out that by inadvertence the constitutional
convention of 1920 left the open use of the circle ballot on
propositions for calling new constitutional conventions. He might
add that another inadvertence left in our constitution the 1875
provision for preferemce vote on candidates for U. S. Senate--now
nulified by adoption of tne sixteenth amendment to the federal
constitution.

The 35th annual report of the Bureau of
American Ethnology (Part 1) has just reached the Historical
Society library. It contains most interesting material on the
custom and folk lore of the Kwakiutl Indians who inhabit British
Columbia. Their culture is kindred to that of tribes in the Puget
Sound region. A most fascinating part of the book is the detailed
account of how these people solved the problems of food and
shelter, including recipes for preparing many dishes which ought
to be good reading for teachers of domestic science.

The American Commission Report on
Conditions in Ireland comes as a gift of the commission. This is
the committee of one hundred appointed by the New York Nation.
Senator Norris of this State is a member. The investigation was
held in America; witnesses came from Ireland. The British
government declined to have part in its work. As the report says
the viewpoint of Ulster unionists and British officials in Ireland
is not represented. The report is therefore one-sided. It is bad
enough at any rate as a disclosure of conditions on the
island.

In the library of the Nebraska State
Historical Society are many quaint and curious old volumes of
western history. Some of these are in Spanish, some in German,
some in American Indian tongues, many in French, the bulk in
English. Special students and research scholars delve in these
volumes. From such books are gleaned the material for plays,
poems, novels, sketches, histories. The great general public knows
these writings only in the form given them by present day writers.
Hundreds of themes and stories in this early literature are yet
untouched by modern interpretation. Some of them are not found in
English translation.

OLD
BOOKS OF WESTERN HISTORY

5

The editor of this magazine plans a series of
articles with the purpose of making this literature more generally
known and enjoyed. Further--to encourage study of the volumes and
the production of an inspiring popular literature from these
sources.
The first work presented is one printed at Paris
in 1758--History of Louisiana by LePage du Pratz, in three
volumes. It is the original French edition. Translations have been
made into English. The original French carries an "atmosphere"
which the translations lack. Bound in solid leather, with two
maps, forty wood cuts and the quaint-faced type used at Paris two
hundred years ago, these volumes are just the handy size to slip
into a coat pocket, and the wide outer margins are a challenge for
making copious notes.
The work is a description as well as a history
of Louisiana --which then included the Nebraska region. The motive
of the author and the time of its publication summon instantly
before the mind scenes in the great world drama still on the
stage--the struggle for world domination and control by the
English speaking people.
In 1758 the war between England and France for
the possession of North America was in its fourth year. The tide
of success which ran in favor of France for the first three years
had turned. Popular opinion in France depreciated the vast
resources of the great province of the Mississippi basin. The
first purpose of M. du Pratz was to correct false impressions and
to give the intelligent French public a true view of the great
fertile valley of the New World.
In his preface the author says he lived sixteen
years in Louisiana, that he made long voyages into its interior,
that he interviewed many French and Indians who knew points he had
not seen, that he had made a study of its plants and animals and a
collection of three hundred medicinal plants from the region and
that he would give a truthful account of the riches of this vast
region. All of this for the glory of France and the King.
A learned French author, M. des Lands, about
that period had written in a history of philosophy that Louisiana
was a sterile land with subterranean lakes inhabited by poisonous
fish. M. du Pratz warmly rejoins that forty years' residence of
French colonists proved that in fertility and climate Louis-

6

NEBRASKA
HISTORY

iana excelled the most favored parts of Europe and that no one
there ever heard of the poisonous fish.
The chapters on agriculture in this work are
among the best early descriptions of this region. The author's
vision sees the products of the land enter into world commerce,
bringing wealth and happiness to those who cultivate the land and
new satisfactions to consumers in Europe and elsewhere.
He describes the bread grains grown in this
region thus: Maiz, which in France is called Turkey-corn, is the
natural product of this country. The kinds are flour corn, homony
corn (white, yellow, red and blue) and small corn, called so
because of its size. Maiz grows on a stalk six to eight feet high
and each stalk bears sometimes six or seven ears.
Wheat, rye, barley and oats grow extremely well
in Louisiana. Wheat, when sown by itself, grows wonderfully, but
when in flower great number of drops of red water may be observed
on the stalk about six inches from the ground which collect there
during the night and disappear at sunrise. This water is of such
an acid nature that in a short time it consumes the stalk and the
ear falls before the grain is formed. To prevent this, which is
due to the richness of the soil, the method I have used is to mix
some rye and dry mould with the seed wheat in such proportion that
the mould shall be equal to the rye and wheat together.

Full of interest to the scientist as well as
historian are the pictures of trees, plants and animals of
Louisiana, from draw-

MORMONS IN NEBRASKA

7

ings by M. du Pratz. In this article there is space only for a
few sentences on the Nebraska-Kansas region. He writes:
The Cansez is the largest known river flowing
into the Missouri. It flows for two hundred leagues through the
most beautiful land. The Missouri brings down cloudy water for it
flows through a land rich and fat where there are no stones.
M. du Pratz' map of Louisiana is fairly accurate
as far as the present site of Kansas City. Beyond that he roughly
indicates the "Pays des Panis" or Pawnee Country, with the
Missouri river turning westward as though the Platte or Niobrara
were its main stream. He says "It will be ages before we explore
the northern part of Louisiana."
This brief review can scarcely convey the charm
of these volumes. No history of agriculture in the Mississippi
valley can ever be complete without careful study of them. They
give detailed directions for the planting and cultivation of all
kinds of crops grown here. How little could the author guess that
the very region he so fondly describes trying to awaken France to
realize its riches would within two centuries feed the French and
English nations fighting side by side against the invader from
beyond the Rhine.

Mormons and the Mormon church have had important
part in Nebraska history. The Mormon camps on our borders, the
picturesque trains of Mormons crossing our plains, the Mormon
settlers who scattered in various unnoticed nooks of Nebraska in
the great migration perion--all have an interest, quite out of
proportion to their total number. Only a few Nebraskans know that
there are twenty Mormon churches with 1,973 members in our state.
These are the Reorganized Church, which repudiates Brigham Young,
but adheres to Joseph Smith and his descendants. This branch
publishes a Journal of History at Independence, Missouri, which is
just now printing the record of the separation of the Reorganizers
from the Salt Lake branch and a very interesting story of human
affairs it makes. Very few people have read the Book of Mormon. it
cannot be called easy reading. It purports among other things--to
give an account of the early migration of a branch of the Jewish
people across the Atlantic to America, of their growth into a
powerful people, of their destruction in war wherein more than two
millions perished. After twice reading the book the editor's
opinion of it as an historical narrative remains unchanged. Yet
the establishment and